The statements in the background of the invention are provided to assist with understanding the invention and its applications and uses, and may not constitute prior art.
Although the human body is designed for regular movements, today, many spend the bulk of their day sitting. Sitting for extended periods of time can cause many health complications, so much so that the phrase “sitting is the new smoking” has taken root in pop culture. Such health complications may be classified into two major categories.
First, sitting is a sedentary lifestyle with long-term effects on internal organs and the brain. For example, sitting at a desk for too long may cause anxiety, cardiovascular diseases, migraines, colon cancer, depression, diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, and even osteoporosis. People prone to such a sedentary lifestyle may come from all age groups and professions, including office workers, students, truck drivers, and many others. Second, many sit with bad postures that can lead to strained muscles and a plethora of orthopedic issues such as back pain, disk damages, and unbalanced hips. Hunching, slouching, leg-crossing, swayed back, and pelvic tilt are all problematic postures that over time can severely impact one's orthopaedic health and quality of life, to name just a few.
To help reduce the health hazards of extended sitting, many ergonomic solutions have been developed over the years. However, current solutions available in the market mainly target bad postures by detecting and correcting such postures using smart chairs having embedded sensors or using wearable devices. A smart chair may use a large number of sensors to constantly monitor a user's posture. Several issues exist for smart chairs. For one, a smart chair is an additional or extra piece of furniture. For two, due to their bulkiness and thus lack of portability, several smart chairs may have to be purchased by the same user to accommodate multiple work locations. For three, every time the smart chair hardware or firmware is upgraded by the manufacturer, the whole chair may have to be replaced. On the other hand, while wearable devices have the advantage of portability, their posture detection capabilities may be limited. For example, a wearable sensor may look at only a tilt of the upper body in the anterior-posterior direction, without any sensing in the medial-lateral direction. Wearables may also be uncomfortable. Whether strapped on the body or clipped on a shirt, wearables are necessarily in constant contact with the body. Moreover, conventional smart chairs and wearable devices generally do not provide historical data tracking or behavioural tracking, and thus fail to monitor postures over time to help the user improve.
It would therefore be an advancement in the state of the art to provide systems and methods for monitoring postures over time and in real-time, without compromising user comfort while also providing portability and ease of use. It would further be an advancement in the state of the art to provide systems and methods for monitoring sedentary behavior over time and in real-time.
It is against this background that the present invention was developed.